Nippon.com is reporting that Kubota Corp. will release a rice planting machine with automated driving functions in October. Earlier this month, the company said that it was investing in a harvesting robot manufacturer based in the U.S.

The risks that can occur during the growing period have increased. The annual mean weather values have not changed, but the problem appears to be an altered distribution: it frequently remains dry for weeks, and extreme amounts of precipitation only fall in very small regions. As a result, soil and/or seedbed preparation must be more closely examined, as must precision seed distribution and intensive soil contact.

Trends in combine technology at Agritechnica 2019 included headers with variable table length and flexible cutterbars so they can be used to harvest the wider range of cereals grown in more diverse crop rotations.

The challenges facing soil cultivation technology are considerable. Crop production, phytosanitary and soil protection requirements must be given equal consideration, all against the backdrop of severe restrictions on the active ingredients used in crop protection products. This means that all conceivable options for preventing soil degradation, humus loss, diseases and pests must be exploited.

If you rank agricultural machinery topics by the degree of controversy they produce few, if any, would beat chemical crop protection. However, this is also the agricultural machinery sector that is offering a disproportionately high number of new and/or improved ideas for setting the already high standards in application accuracy even higher.

As in 2017, registrations for the Agritechnica 2019 DLG innovations list in the area of fertilization technology were dominated by registrations concerning the topic of farm fertilizer spreading. The Fertilizer Ordinance regulations are also influencing technical development in this segment. The compulsory requirement of increased spreading close to the ground is causing companies to deal with the technical problems, particularly in the case of large working widths.

This year, articles dealing with low water reserves for land used for agricultural purposes, the high prevailing temperatures or climate change in general often carried the title "Drought in Germany." Hand-in-hand with this, the necessity of irrigation is also being discussed with increasing frequency. The consensus is that irrigation is becoming ever more important to safeguard agricultural yields.

Both the immediate and long-term future of the manufacturing industry will be defined by the development of several ever-evolving and cutting-edge trends and technologies. It’s critically important for manufacturers to develop a keen understanding of what they are, how they will grow over time, and how they will impact those within the industry.

Kinze Manufacturing has developed a new high-speed meter and seed tube to provide row crop farmers with accurate seed placement at speeds up to 12 miles per hour. The new planter technology, called True Speed, is planned for introduction in the 2021 planting season.

Some 45 years after New Holland pioneered the twin rotor combine technology, Deere will introduce its first dual-axial rotor threshing and separating units in 2020. The announcement of the new series of Deere twin rotor X9 combines was made in November at Agritechnica in Hanover, Germany.